Melandri gets ready to challenge in 2013
After a remarkable 2012 season in which BMW Motorrad Motorsport rider Marco Melandri won not only the first SBK races for the BMW S1000RR but went on to be a championship challenger, Melandri remains the spearhead of BMW's new-look effort in 2013.
With the team he rides for now - BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK - run out of Marco's native Italy and not Germany like before, but with full factory development support for engines and electronics still in place, Melandri remains in an enviable position compared to most as the 2013 season draws near.
Although there appears to be work still to do in finding weekend-on-weekend consistency of machine performance from the highly-oversquare if ‘conventional' four-cylinder BMW machine, Melandri made progress on the new-for-2013 17-inch tyres at a recent Jerez test.
When asked by WorldSBK.com if the outside view of the official BMW bike - that when works well it works very well, but that it maybe has a smaller window of perfection than some other machines - Melandri said, "I think our bike is a very good bike but, like you say, the window to make it work and give you good confidence is very small. When you are inside this window you can be fast and it looks easy. When something is not perfect and you go out of this window you fight with the bike sometimes. I think this is the main place where we have to work, to make the bike easier. We knew this before the season, we know now. The first year was to try to understand what we have to do more on the bike. So for the first year, for sure we did more than was expected last season."
Melandri's indication that he and his team possibly over-performed in 2012, right up to what was a final ranking of third, with six individual race wins along the way, showed just how much progress was made last year. Not being champions after entering 2012 a season with no prior race wins for the S1000RR does not point to a lack of ambition or improvement in the entire project.
The secret of success in 2013 for Melandri and BMW's new-look official team? "I think everything is a package. Rider, team, bike, factory - all together," said Marco. "For sure the rider may be on top and he must try to stimulate and push the team and give the right information. Then the team has to push the factory and the factory has to understand the information an what to do with the bike. I think it is always teamwork. Alone, the rider or team or factory cannot do this."
